Spring Shoes

When
Leif moved to Oregon last year, he left behind an old mattress. Mattresses
fall into the same category as modems and microwaves: You only need ONE.

The mattress was too big to fit into our garbage bin, and I didn't have
any friends with a truck, so it stuck around for a few months before Mike
figured out a way to get rid of it.

We got bolt cutters.

Under
the fabric cover, this mattress had several layers of padding.

On top was a quarter-inch thick yellow urethane foam pad. Under
that was a quarter-inch pad of blended cotton felt.

The
mattress tag identified the felt as being boric-acid treated. Some
mattresses that get thrown away have also been uric-acid treated.

In this photo, the top two layers have been peeled back, revealing the
third layer, a purple quarter-inch pad of resin-treated shredded
clippings. This is the layer that actually touches the springs inside the
mattress.

Here
you can see a cross section of the 3 layers that provide you blissful
nights of comfort. I thought this was a pretty cool examination until I
realized you can see this same display in any mattress store.

Mattress marketing concentrates on how comfortable the beds are for
sleep. Strange that cars, clothes, liquor, medicine, cosmetics and tiny, wireless video cameras
are sold with sex, but mattresses are marketed with
sleep.

I bet sales of a Serta Velvet Lovenest
would put other beds to shame.

This
twin-sized Simmons mattress retails new for about USD$150. Fancier models
of this size sell for up to about $600, most of which is determined by the
thickness of the foam, cotton and shred layers.

The springs on this mattress were intricately twisted together,
obviously designed to avoid poking through the padding. I'd like to give
hearty "thank you" to whatever engineer worked on that spring
pattern.

In
this photo you can compare the volume of different toppings on this old
Simmons Royalty I. From left to right, the shredded clippings pad, the
cotton felt, and the urethane foam.

I
saved a little square of mattress padding for a handy couch-fire
prevention pad.

Hey Rob, great story about a mattress, where the
hell are the shoes?

Ok,
anyway, with all the covers stripped off of the mattress, I got to the
center of the thing. A tight network of firm springs.

Cutting apart steel springs with pair of bolt cutters is pretty
enjoyable. When you clip through a wire, there is a satisfying
"click".

Within a few hours I was through the wire and on my way to freedom in Strasbourg.

Here
is an example of a single spring. There were 249 of these in the
mattress. That was too many to throw away, so I tried to think of a
good project to re-use some of them.

What
I came up with were spring-soled shoes.

I coiled 5 bedsprings together with some of the other bed-wire and
hot-glued them to a pair of Converse low-tops.

Tom,
Elise, Amy, Shawn and Steven came by as I was tidying up and wanted a
demonstration. Luckily it was dark and I had been drinking, so it was a
perfect opportunity to get outside and test drive my dangerous new
invention.

I laced them up and went out to the sidewalk.

Having
springs on your shoes is dangerous. It adds a random element to your
walking and standing. but it certainly seemed like they were having an
effect on my jumping.

I jumped around until I was totally out of breath. Mike manned the
camera, and he got some good action shots. Eventually one of the springs
tore out of the hot-glue bond, so I hobbled back upstairs.

In
April, the NBA playoffs began, and I got the urge to try the shoes out
again. I wanted to see if they really helped me jump.

I convinced Antonia to film me out at the basketball court.

Just walking through the park, holding the shoes in my hands I got a
lot of attention.

"Where did you get those shoes"? One young mother asked.

I
used the insane voice to ramble something about Nasa and the Tigger Movie
and she left me alone.

I started off with the whole court to myself, but before long there
were quite a few people out there. They were watching a little, mostly
just waiting for me to quit fooling around and get off the court.

Here
you can see my full weight crushing the springs flat. To actually support
my weight, I think would have needed about 10 bedsprings on each foot, but
they still provided lift.

At
6'1" (1.85 meters), I have touched the (10') rim on a number of occasions,
but with the spring shoes, I wasn't even close.

I think it was the wobble factor.. I had to move with a bit more
caution, which limited the amount of gusto I could expend when leaping. In
the sports world this is known as "tentative", which is probably
the reason the WNBA decided to stop allowing players to wear high-heels.

If you are getting rid of a mattress or a box-spring, you should first
try to find a place that will clean, re-cover and re-sell the thing. You
might even make a few bucks on it, but if you don't have a truck, and you
DO have bolt-cutters, you might want to try fashioning your own pair of
spring shoes.

We can't play 1-on-1 spring-shoe league basketball however, as I
decided to sell my pair on Ebay.